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Monday, November 30, 2009

This is a montage from the documentary "Hells Angels Forever," featuring a few NYC Hells Angels members and a scene from E.3rd Street headquarters (8:43). I think I recognize president Sandy Alexander (:30, 9:12, etc.) and "Big" Vinnie Giorlamo (:07, :26, etc.) -- can anyone confirm if that is indeed them?

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Of course the Filmore East, formerly located at 105 Second Avenue, was one of the most popular music venues in America in the late 60s and early 70s. Though relatively short lived, it played host to music giants such as The Who, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and many more.

This archival performance is of one of many Grateful Dead performances at the Filmore, recorded February 11, 1970, at the height of the Filmore's legendary run.

This group of local clergy, all practicing within a few block of each other, held its first meeting spring 2009 in New York City’s East Village. In a desire to know each other personally and to see where partnership might lead, the group has grown around its shared mission to serve, to celebrate its tremendous diversity, and to rejoice in the rich traditions represented.

Each institution below will share from its tradition with intended offerings to include Taize, jazz, gospel, chants, and traditional holiday songs and hymns.

Joe Raico speaking at the Commemoration of the Centennial of the Uprising of the 20,000. This took place on Sunday November 22, 2009/ 1- 3:30 pm at IBT Local 237 Union Hall, 216 W 14th St, New York, New York. There was a screening of Alex Szalats Clara Lemlich: A Strike Leaders Diary. This was followed by discussion with honored guests: Rita Margules (Clara Lemlich's daughter), Richard Greenwald (Triangle Fire Historian), and Bob Lazar (former ILGWU archivist).Organizers of the event wereThe Remembering the Triangle Fire Coalition andOrganizing the Curriculum

Ruth Serkel speaking at the Commemoration of the Centennial of the Uprising of the 20,000. This took place on Sunday November 22, 2009/ 1- 3:30 pm at IBT Local 237 Union Hall, 216 W 14th St, New York, New York. There was a screening of Alex Szalats Clara Lemlich: A Strike Leaders Diary. This was followed by discussion with honored guests: Rita Margules (Clara Lemlich's daughter), Richard Greenwald (Triangle Fire Historian), and Bob Lazar (former ILGWU archivist).Organizers of the event wereThe Remembering the Triangle Fire Coalition andOrganizing the Curriculum

Friday, November 13, 2009

Legendary Lower Manhattan City Councilmember Miriam Friedlander, who died at the age of 95 last month, was remembered on Thursday, November 12, 2009 at the Council Chambers, City Hall. The event was hosted by Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and Family and Friends. Speaking above was Miriam's friend Frances Goldin. There was an article about Miriam in The Villager last month

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

LESHP director Eric Ferrara gave a lecture/book signing at Bluestockings on Monday, November 2, 2009, in support of his new book, "A Guide to Gangsters, Murderers and Weirdos of New York City's Lower East Side." Read more here.

ECKSTEIN--Herbert, died peacefully at home in Great Neck at the age of 87 on October 27, 2009. Beloved husband of Nadine for 56 years; devoted father of Kenneth, Linda and Myra Mogilner; cherished father-in-law of Ruthann Eckstein and Dr. Alon Mogilner; adored grandfather of Max, Sam, Shoshana, Josh, Zack, Joey and Gabi; much loved brother of David, Eugene and Barbara Shostak. During his lifetime he was proprietor of H. Eckstein & Sons, a dry goods store and Lower East Side institution. He will be sorely missed.

I believe that's Eckstein's store window showing on Grand Street on the left of the picture above. I fondly recall my trips to Eckstein's with my mother. The basement at Eckstein's was a world unto itself and there was always interesting back and forth sales talk/flirting going on between my mother and the salesmen.

Trendiness Among the Tenements; Descendants Return to a Remade Lower East SideBy JOSEPH BERGER

H. Eckstein & Sons was not quite as much a fixture of the Lower East Side as Guss's Pickles or Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery. Still, Brenda Zimmer spent much of her life there, haggling with customers in the cramped and hectic clothing store on Orchard Street that her family owned, hanging on until a greatly weakened Eckstein's finally shut its doors in 1998.

Yet when she told friends a few years ago that her daughter, Amy, was moving into one of the neighborhood's storied tenements, ''they looked a little shocked,'' she said.''Everybody spent their lives trying to get out of there, and my daughter is trying to come back,'' Mrs. Zimmer said, recalling her friends' puzzlement and suggesting more than a little of her own.

The rapid changes in a neighborhood famous as the squalid foothold for immigrants just off the boat have produced more than a few such expressions of astonishment.There are still many people around who were glad to escape the neighborhood when the old life seemed to be seeping out of it more than a half-century ago. Some of them are now wonderstruck as their adventurous children and grandchildren are returning.

On a recent stroll from Hester Street to Houston Street with Amy, Mrs. Zimmer seemed tickled that her daughter, a 28-year-old Yale graduate and freelance writer, had actually settled a few blocks from where Amy's grandfather was born and where Mrs. Zimmer worked full time for 15 years. Sure, only a handful of the wholesale and retail stores that sold hosiery, linens, lingerie, and handbags were still around, and even many of the bodegas of a more recent era of migration were gone. But the neighborhood had once again quickened to life, something closer to the bustle of the days when the walk-up tenements were teeming and the dowdy stores drew shoppers from all over for their Sunday bargains.

Dry-goods shops are being replaced by restaurants with $30 entrees; by boutiques where the tastefully spaced wares are fashionably retro but the prices are decidedly nouveau; by galleries like Fusion-Arts Museum, which exhibits a robotlike ''fusion golem'' made of motorized hardware; by cafes where young people peck at laptops while sipping lattes; and even by one shop, Toys in Babeland, that, to Mrs. Zimmer's embarrassed amusement, sells sex toys.